Douglas McCarthy, the singer of the pioneering U.K. proto-industrial band Nitzer Ebb, has died. He was 58.
The band confirmed the news on its social media accounts. It did not list a cause of death.
“It is with a heavy heart that we regret to inform that Douglas McCarthy passed away this morning of June 11th, 2025,” Nitzer Ebb wrote. “We ask everyone to please be respectful of Douglas, his wife, and family in this difficult time. We appreciate your understanding and will share more information soon.”
McCarthy founded the group Nitzer Ebb in Essex, with David Gooday and Bon Harris. The band released its first single, “Isn’t It Funny How Your Body Works,” in 1985, on its own independent Power of Voice Communications label.
The band drew aesthetics from the experiments of post-punk and the nascent goth movement of the time, with admiration for sinister yet seductive acts like the Birthday Party, Bauhaus and Malaria.
McCarthy and his bandmates paired that sensibility with the new potential of electronic music, crafting a harsh and antagonistic style that moved like club music but hit like punk. The style came to be known as EBM (electronic body music), and their 1987 Geffen debut LP, “That Total Age,” played a formative role in the industrial wave to come, anticipating the rise of acts like Nine Inch Nails and Rammstein and, later, Cold Cave and Gesaffelstein.
With howled, deadpan lyrics like on “Join in the Chant,” McCarthy set a template for how punk’s urgency could lock into dance music’s meticulousness. Other cuts, like “Let Your Body Learn,” became fixtures in acid house and techno DJ sets.
The band followed it up with 1989’s “Belief,” with famed producer Flood, and released three more LP’s before dissolving in 1995. McCarthy worked with former tour mate Depeche Mode’s Alan Wilder on the side project Recoil, and collaborated with techno producer Terence Fixmer.
McCarthy revived Nitzer Ebb in 2007 and released the return-to-form LP “Industrial Complex” in 2010. McCarthy also released “Kill Your Friends,” a solo album, in 2012.
While Nitzer Ebb toured regularly into the present day, McCarthy faced health issues late in life, dropping off a 2024 European tour citing liver cirrhosis.
“After years of alcohol abuse, I was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver,” McCarthy said on Instagram last year. “For more than two years I haven’t been drinking, but recovery is a long process that can at times be extremely hard to predict.”
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